What Are The Secrets Of An Effective CV?

The question on everyone’s lips: what makes a great CV?

There are lots of bad CV habits out there and as an employer, I think it’s important for candidates to understand what we expect to see.

Firstly, remember that the person looking to hire you will spend no more than a few seconds, a couple of minutes tops, scanning your CV, so it has to be impressive, and instantly effective.

It’s exactly like Dragon’s Den: each entrepreneur has only a matter of minutes to pitch themselves to the Dragons to guarantee an investor’s interest. This time the product is you.

There is no room for a finely worded, beautifully composed story of the ins and outs and ups and downs of your career. You need to present your experience, strengths, skills and ambitions in a short, accessible package all in two A4 pages.

When you are writing a CV, the first thing you need to ask yourself is ‘what job am I applying for? Most people write generic CV’s. Now bearing in mind that the employer is looking for a specific candidate with a specific skill set, when faced with a generic CV the employer has to try really hard to find a specific skill set that fits the brief, by which time they have generally become bored.

A CV is a marketing document, it is a sales document. Think of it as building brand you, the CV is designed to sell you as a candidate to an employer, grab their interest from the word go, to entice them into hiring you.

Make your CV work for you, by ensuring that the way you list your experience highlights what you bring to the table.

I always want to see how you personally have added value to your existing employers business, by increasing sales, improving staff performance or coming up with innovative ideas that have opened up new markets. What are your USPs, why should a new business invest its money in hiring you?

When I was first setting up Alexander Mann in 1985, I was spending so long phoning hundreds of different companies and getting nowhere – and then I realised I was using the same pitch to every client. I had to tailor my pitch to suit them which is exactly what you should be doing with your CV; tailor it to the personality of the business you’re applying to. Each CV you create should be a bespoke item. Taking the time to create a CV specific to each job tells an employer that you have a genuine interest in the position.

My recommendation is design a generic template and, depending on the job you’re applying for, personalise it – capture the correlation with the vacancy. The critical elements are – usually – obvious from the job specification and the job ad.

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